Monday, June 13

Gurg

Tim Grgurich is an NBA champion, and while I'd love to offer this basketball lifer the heartiest of congratulations upon reaching the apex of basketball achievement, it's possible ... no, not just possible, completely likely that he could care not one whit.

To know what Gurgs thinks of the league, listen only to what he told author Curt Sampson Full Court Pressure,the seminal book on mid-90s Sonic basketball:

"The NBA is bullshit."

If you followed the Sonics in the 90s, you knew Bob Kloppenburg handled the team's intense defense, George Karl handled the media and the overall tone, and Grgurich handled the offense and the intensity. To give you just a taste of that intensity, here's another quote lifted from Sampson's book:

As always, Gurg's voice was hoarse. ... He ran through every part of every drill, working as hard as any player, the sweat dripping off his nose and chin. He'd been here since six-thirty: he watched a mile or two of videotape, ate a bran muffin, worked out Ricky [Pierce], worked out himself, then practice, more tape, weight lifting, another workout. He might get home by 7 p.m.

There were a number of reasons why I pulled for Dallas in the Finals: Because they weren't the Big 3, because of Jason Kidd, because the way my 2-year-old daughter would imitate Jason Terry's airplane move and how she fell in love with JJ Barea, because of Dirk's greatness ... all of that.

But more than anything else, it was because of Gurg. To see James, Wade, and Bosh be rewarded for, as Joe Posnanski put it today, "cutting in line," would be sad and pathetic. To see Tim Grgurich be rewarded would be the complete oppposite: A reward for hard work, intensity, commitment, and, above all, sacrifice.